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Monday, June 3, 2013

Reaching Goals, Querying, and WANA

We're living in a hotel until my husband's contract is settled. Daily housekeeping and my stuff in storage, unable to distract me, leave me little else to do than get down to business. No excuses! I see those goals and they're getting reached!

Hooray for me! I met the goal I pledged last week! The finishing touches on "Middle Awash in Talent" are done. Now to find some validation for them...

I also made a huge leap forward, which I haven't mentioned before: I've got The Seven Noble Knights of Lara out on query. I was astonished at the huge uptick in neurosis, obsession, and pure terror that finishing off my basic query letter caused. I know that getting it traditionally published is going to take a long time. I calmly accept it, and I thought that acceptance made me immune to the searing pain of moving from having all my options open to possibly getting rid of the agents I submitted to because I'd unknowingly done something wrong in my query letter.

Yikes!

As I was finishing the letter up, I showed sentences to my poor husband and badgered him until he said the magic words (that any agent would love it -- the words never came because, how would he know?), I asked anyone and everyone what they thought, and I resorted to some magical thinking.

But now, it's out there. It's about to get REAL. Even if reality just means submitting to more and more places every week.

I'm one of the people in the seven billion who feels that the human condition is fundamentally alone. It's especially acute for writers. So I read every post at We Are Not Alone, and try to get it through my skull. Maybe someday I'll have less trouble reaching out for and finding the help I need, and I'll really believe it!

Thanks so much to the handful of people who really helped me with the query letter process. You know who you are.